Douglas Isbell / Don Savage
Headquarters, Washington, DC July 2, 1999
(Phone: 202/358-1547)
Bill Steigerwald
Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD
(Phone: 301/286-5017)
NOTE TO EDITORS: N99-38
HISTORIC GLENN MISSION HELPS EXPLAIN SOLAR MYSTERY
Coordinated observations by two spacecraft during John Glenn's
return to space have provided a surprising explanation for a persistent
solar mystery: Why does the high-speed solar wind race away from the Sun
twice as fast as expected?
The discovery will be the subject of a Space Science Update press
briefing at 1 p.m. EDT on Thursday, July 8, in the James E. Webb
Memorial Auditorium at NASA Headquarters, 300 E St. SW, Washington, DC.
During the October 1998 Space Shuttle flight, two spacecraft
observed the high-speed stream of the solar wind, electrically charged
particles that can affect the space around Earth. One set of data came
from NASA's Spartan 201 spacecraft, deployed from the Space Shuttle, and
the other came from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO)
spacecraft, a joint mission of the European Space Agency and NASA.
Participants in the briefing will include:
* Dr. John L. Kohl, senior astrophysicist at the Smithsonian
Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, MA, and the Principal
Investigator for both the Ultraviolet Coronagraph Spectrometer
instrument aboard SOHO and the Spartan 201 Ultraviolet Coronal
Spectrometer.
* Dr. Leonard Strachan, an astrophysicist at the Smithsonian
Astrophysical Observatory's Center for Astrophysics and a member of the Spartan
Ultraviolet Coronal Spectrometer team.
* Dr. Steven R. Cranmer, an astrophysicist at the Smithsonian
Astrophysical Observatory's Center for Astrophysics and a member of the SOHO
Ultraviolet Coronagraph Spectrometer team.
* Dr. Craig DeForest, a solar physicist from Stanford University,
Palo Alto, CA, working at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD.
* Dr. George Withbroe, science director for the Sun-Earth
Connection theme in NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, DC.
The briefing and supporting video file will be carried live on NASA
Television, which is available on transponder 9C of the GE-2 satellite
at 85 degrees West longitude, vertical polarization, frequency 3880 MHz,
audio of 6.8 MHz. Two-way question and answer capability will be
available for news media at NASA centers.
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